


Gossips

by Radiolaria



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Bittersweet, Canonical Character Death, Echoes, Gen, Headcanon, Humour, Not Beta Read, Post-Episode: 2013 Xmas The Time of the Doctor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-16
Updated: 2014-01-16
Packaged: 2018-01-08 21:36:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,919
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1137649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Radiolaria/pseuds/Radiolaria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clara found herself with a useless, napping Doctor in the arms. And nobody knew how to fly a TARDIS. She might have needed something a little more convincing than a Doctor.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gossips

**Author's Note:**

> Headcanon that unexpectedly turned into something of a quick character study.

”Course I love him. He’s my mate, my best friend, my captain, my crush. I’ll do anything for him. In fact, I have.”

A single long interrupted snore ignored Clara.

“I’ll save submarines in the most inappropriate outfit; sacrifice my most cherished souvenirs; ruin my sanity twice a day…”

In all likelihood, the snorer would not stop.

“But never mind that,” Clara sighed heavily, leaning on the console and rubbing her temples. “Why ever would I need to know anything about anything?”

An inquisitive whirring tried to cover up the snoring.

“No offence.” She lifted her hand in defence, glancing up at the rotor. “But you need a pilot and he definitely did not show me how to pilot you.” The flat of Clara’s hand landed with a sharp popping sound on the console and a variety of buttons blinked back at her. “He didn’t even leave me a number to call in case of emergency.”

The TARDIS cooed back in answer and the Doctor’s snore missed a beat prompting Clara to disdainfully turn her head to her newly regenerated Doctor, then decadently lying across the comfy chair. Puffy hair and clothes, fists tight like a child. He looked like a sketch, she mused. For twenty minutes directly after the regeneration, he had flailed and twirled profusely, unable to focus on saving their life or flying the TARDIS, which had eventually and on her own landed at the back end of the world –Clara had no idea which world- before collapsing in the chair and slipping into what he probably considered a well-earned nap. All along, Clara had gripped the railing so strongly she feared she might get bruises.

“Yeah, I know, even for a two-men-crew ship he is the most incompetent captain I have ever seen.” Clara squinted.  “Not that I have seen that many.”

From the Doctor’s chair, the snores amplified and died away, leaving Clara in a soundless ignorance of what course to take next. The wait for him to wake up would be long, but could also prove to be completely useless if he turned out to be as amnesiac as he was before. Powerless, she flicked a lever, with no answer from the TARDIS; the Doctor’s bout of snoring manifested itself again.

“Yes, you can feel offended, I am talking about you.” She sighed. “And presently only to myself. I’ll have to appeal to the cow.” She straightened up, setting herself firmly on her two feet before shouting. “Cow!” The TARDIS indignantly wheezed. Clara grimaced and asked with equanimity:  “A little help, please.”

The whole room thrummed and flickered around them, Clara grasped the console’ edges, while the Doctor rolled none too gently from his seat onto the floor. In a second, the ship stilled, the rotor halted its hops, leaving Clara with the conviction they had flown and landed somewhere.

“Okay. I guess it means that if I open the door, I will find help.”

 She rushed to the exit, gleefully ignoring the bundle of a man snoring on the floor, and yanked open the door, only to halt immediately, shocked. She made a face at the view.

“Too much help, maybe?”

Before her was a vast open square. From every corner, hundreds of people were rushing in different directions. Her initial surprise overcome, she realised that the plaza was encompassed with pilasters and walls soaring to a glass roof. It was a gigantic hallway, broadly lit. Her mouth fell open; her mistake came from the large –she meant, huge- spheres hovering high above and casting a strikingly natural daylight onto the plaza. Alien architecture, definitely. On the other side of the thick transparent panels acting as ceiling was a view all too familiar; Earth.

“So, not on Earth. I still need to find…” Large corridors, great doors, more people hustling around. Had she just accidentally landed in the middle of a hall full of people? She gulped. Aliens, all around, running and talking too fast.  She needed to stay calm and assess the situation; the TARDIS must have had a reason for taking them here. Her scrutinising gaze fell on an overlarge orientation panel, with mentions of cafeteria, library, amphitheatres one to twenty.

“Wait, is this…” Looking around, she found a glass door leading to an office and reading ‘Luna University’.

“Right,” she mumbled, patting the doorframe. “How come you send me to a University? Am I supposed to chase medical students –nice, new sport? I hunt doctors still in training with an amnesiac two-hearted alien as bait? Go figure. You are a mean little thing, you know that? Unless…”

Of course, the one he kept referring to as the Professor. River Song. She would know. He had said she always knew.

Clara glanced back at the Doctor, who was now lovingly clutching his shoe, drooling, on the floor.

 “She seriously expects me to go around looking for your future dead spouse?” No answer. “Good.” The ship appeared to be sulking.

Clara hurried to the Doctor and scrambled to get him back in the chair, where he proceeded to snore even louder. Clara considered the situation: had Clara known how to find Vastra, the lizard woman would have been her first choice. But it was obvious that, for unknown reasons, the TARDIS had found it easier to default to Professor Song. She could consider herself lucky the ship did not drop her in prehistoric times. The Doctor had once explained to her –without teaching a jot about flying the ship of course because why bother- that although sentient, the TARDIS _needed_ a pilot; she could see all of time and space at once. ”Which means if you ask her to go somewhere that does not belong to the ‘only existed for a fraction of a nanopart of a second’ category, she will eventually get it wrong,” he had claimed.

Clara knew, of course, that the key to time travel was coordinates; without them, you would end up buried under a mountain or right at the heart of a burning star. Half the time, the Doctor didn’t seem to know how to operate his ship. But he knew the coordinates of where and when they would land.  All she needed was an address book. Except he didn’t have any and she had no idea how to get to Victorian London.

Professor River Song was probably the safer solution; if she could get hold of her in what appeared to be an intergalactic renowned compound, based on the Moon. Right, Professor Song. Despite the oddness of her bond with the Doctor and despite the nature of her first encounter with Clara, the woman had proven she could be trusted, even if not exactly straightforward, when it came to her current status. Clara would expect her live self not to be different.

She quickly scribbled a note for the Doctor to find and pinned it on the door, so that, provided he still remembered how to read, he would not wander out and accidentally give a class on the importance of tongue in investigating the custard pie abduction.

It felt oddly natural to move between what must have been students, except obviously from other worlds. Only half of them seemed human. The remainder consisted of vaguely humanoids of striking shade, positively feline silhouettes and lots of tentacles. The variety in clothing style was a tribute to how students are just a species on its own. As on every campus, dozens of eyes would gingerly pass her, necessarily make a judgment and be distracted eventually. The teachers would sneak between the hurdles, as if of another consistency. Some groups were handing manifestos, advertisements. Outside, splayed on the artificial patches of grass the campus would not fail to possess, students were probably lounging while leafing through their notes.

She chuckled. Some things never change, even in space.

Clara swiftly spotted what would be considered as the information desk, run by a lithe but multi-limbed creature. She tip-toed close, assured but bewildered. Her heart was beating a tattoo. It tasted a little bit like adventure, without him.

“I beg your pardon. Would you be so kind as to indicate me where to find Professor Song’s office?”

The receptionist kept typing on three different keyboards Clara could not see.

“What department?”

Clara was taken by surprise when she heard the strings of note coming from her interlocutor’s mouth. She panicked very briefly, checking her mental files on River Song, professor. She had flashes of the Doctor mentioning her in relation to digs, Cleopatra, revolutions, handcuffs. The latter had probably nothing to do with her field of studies, but Clara could at least infer the others would suggest History, Archaeology or Anthropology.  Not keen to arouse the secretary’s suspicion with a wrong request, she vaguely indicated humanities.

The being contemptibly sighed and resumed typing behind her desk. The answer immediately coming on the screen startled the attendant and Clara feared she had ended up at a time when River was a student. Possible, and she would really seem a fool.

“Professor _River Song_?” the receptionist asked, a little concerned. Clara nodded, wary of the tone but noting the _Professor_ had not been dropped.

“I’m sorry to inform you Professor Song passed away.” The creature paused, looking at Clara from under spectacles. “Some time ago.”

Clara blinked. _Not again_ , she thought.

“But that’s not possible. I was sent…”

“To the wrong time, dearie,“ the creature cast a quick accusatory glance at Clara’s wrist as if searching for a watch and Clara immediately cursed herself. Vortex Manipulator. The attendant added, dubious but almost sorry. “There was a memorial, I remember, thirty years ago, back to when it happened. Archaeology you know, risky field.” A pause, as if wondering if Clara should be offered a handkerchief. _Was there ever a time when River Song was alive?_ She would murder the cow. Or rather she would find a body for her conscience, then transfer her mind into it and murder her then. Seeing Clara did not seem to burst into tears, the receptionist carried on. “I can point you out to her current successor.”

Clara waved dismissively her hand and turned her back to the desk, murmuring a discouraged thank you. She was three feet away from the desk when she realised what the secretary had said.

“Wait, what did you say her successor’s name was?”

The creature was by her side in a second with a piece of paper reading the name, bellowing at a group of students busy doing nothing at the entrance. Two of them trotted up to the desk –the last one flew. The receptionist dropped the note in their hand and Clara was dragged by an ever changing party in corridors and stupendous halls, across stairs and balconies. She would gasp often and listen eagerly to the sometimes pithy, sometimes over-detailed guide tour the students would dare to give her.

Ten minutes later Clara was shoved into a beautiful mahogany office by a dishevelled dog -a student, coming from a planet she could not pronounce the name of-, and introduced to Professor Clara Oswald-Hill. Current holder of the ancient ancient archaeology chair and as it turned out, River’s former student.

She seemed completely oblivious to the obviousness that Clara was a perfect replica of her; brown eyes, long chocolate hair and preference for cute dress included; only a good twenty years younger.

Mrs. Hill seemed about River’s age when Clara met her on Trenzalore’s ruins. Only, was it even the professor’s true appearance? Stuck in a computer, Clara would probably add a good four inches to her frame or try a blond bob or ultramarine cat ears. Who was she kidding? Had she been transformed into a program, she probably would spend one day as a paradise bird and the next one as Mary Poppins.  Pr. Hill was not a unicorn though. Although she felt like one to Clara. It was hardly the first time Clara had encountered one of her echoes. There was that time on Barcelona and that other time in Florence where a very stunning strawberry blonde with a very recognisable nose tried to woo her and this was probably never going to be anything but confusing. But this one was different, she looked very much grown up. The others had looked like Claras and Clara could not help but think ‘She will die; she is a copy and in the future she will die to save the Doctor.’

She was not just a story.

Pr. Clara Hill had a paperweight representing a massive alien incomprehensible Cthulhu-like sea (sky?) creature that she must have in some way found appealing otherwise she would not keep it out to meet her students, wore her hair up in a complicated braid Clara would never dream to have the patience to sit and knit on her own head, did not bite her nails, wore bright red lipstick, was a running addict, owned very old –original?- specimens of _A series of unfortunate events_ in her office, was probably married to the amazon goddess brunette she was tenderly embracing in the biggest frame on her shelves. In a word, Pr. Clara Hill was Clara, but was not. She never thought about it. None of them were born to save the Doctor; they were _born_ and lived their life until the Doctor came crashing into it, like the awaited _peroratio_ in a speech. It just is a _stage_ of their life. Not their life.

Pr. Clara Hill was her own person and it really was not a surprise she did not recognise herself in the young woman sitting before her. Clara felt almost offended the Doctor did see the resemblance between the one in the Dalek Asylum and her. The Professor’s anecdotes hinted at a personality Clara would find entrancing and Clara wondered if that came from River Song, if she was as lively and surprising, yet imposing, as the woman before Clara. When she talked about her teacher, fondly, Pr. Hill displayed glances and gestures that Clara recognised as River’s rather than hers. She loved her mentor.

“Well, not exactly my mentor,” she corrected, offering Clara a cup of tea. She took hers with a drop of vodka. Clara grimaced. “I studied in her classes only for a short time before she passed away. She was a busy woman, often requested here and there. As a consequence, we hardly shared a ‘special’ relationship. But I learnt a great deal from her studies and conferences. I read, watched, listened to everything she did, after her death.” Clara Hill sipped her tea, dreamily, to the point of sadness. “Not even everything. She hid and destroyed quite a share of her own work.” Pr. Hill rocked her whole frame and squirmed maliciously, shaking her head. “That is so her.” She paused, lost to her thought. “She was a remarkable woman.”

 _She was,_ Clara thought. Time travel made them all ghosts. And Clara had never been afraid of ghosts. She had made fun of them as a kid, and stood on tombs as an adult. But they had been people, not just stories. As Pr. Hill, echo number one two three of Clara Oswin Oswald, was. Pr. Hill would die, and people would be there to remember her as everything but Clara’s echo. And River Song was not just the echo of herself.

Lives.

She felt unhappy. And began to suspect this was what the TARDIS had intended for her all along.

Before even meeting River, she had labelled her ‘dead wife’, ex, love interest in a comedy penned by Noël Coward. Archetypes.

No analysis.

No cross-reference.

Rubbish paper.

Clara looked down to her lap, promptly averted her eyes, fleeing to the furniture, when she found between her fingers the marks of a little girl lost, desperate to prove she could be the boss.

On the left shelf, between a temple miniature and a delicate sculpture of a quill, almost hidden, stood a frame that could barely contain the space hair of a beaming woman.

For the first time, she wished she could have known River Song, without the Doctor’s ghost lurking between them, and making a myth out of a woman.

From the other end of the room, Pr. Hill cleared her throat, more to herself than to remind Clara of her presence. Clara settled her eyes on her; her confidence, her peculiarities, and her furrow lines. There, _for now_. That was Clara’s doing.

Fingers intertwined in her lap, elbows boldly spread across the arms of the dark wooden chair –throne even- she was sitting in, Pr. Hill lowered her eyes and half confessed in a chuckle: “You might even call it a celebrity crush. But I take you were not here to discuss her. What did you want to ask her? I am no competition for _the_ Professor River Song, but I have some _useful_ degrees of my own.” She grinned, superb.

Clara wavered, uncomfortable in her chair. Pr. Hill _appeared_ different from herself, but Clara had a hunch she would not appreciate what was to follow.

“You said you knew everything about her? What about her…” Clara swallowed. “Address book?”

Pr. Hill raised a challenged eyebrow.  

 

 

*** 

 

Half an hour later, Clara was welcomed by a flabbergasted Jenny Flint, while commander Strax was dragging the Doctor up the stairs of the Detectives’ residence:

“No, but to be honest, how did you get her here, with him in that state?”

The Doctor snored in answer.


End file.
